Moscow, Nauka Publishing House. 1975. 576 pp. The print run is 7000 copies. Price 3 rubles 39 kopecks. This publication of documents is the first volume of a three-volume publication prepared according to the plan of scientific cooperation of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the Institute of History in Belgrade. The editorial board consists of V. G. Karasev, S. A. Nikitin (editor - in - chief), I. V. Churkina from the Soviet side, I. Kochi and V. Matula from the Czechoslovak side, and N. Petrovich from the Yugoslav side. Compiled by V. Matula and I. V. Churkina. The reviewed volume is a collection of letters from Russian and foreign Slavic public and political figures covering issues of relations between Russia and the Slavic peoples of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. The variety of issues raised in the correspondence makes it interesting for a wide range of specialists - historians, cultural and scientific historians, literary critics and linguists. The published letters concern many aspects of the national-political, social and cultural development of the southern and Western Slavs in its most diverse manifestations, as well as the attitude of participants in the national movement of these peoples to official Russia, their relations with certain circles of the Russian public, mainly Slavophiles. The latter circumstance, which is very important for understanding the socio-psychological environment in which the published correspondence originated, is primarily explained by the addressee's personality. M. F. Rayevsky, who was rector of the Russian embassy Church in Vienna for more than 40 years, was an educated and very active person, and was a prominent figure in the development of Russian-Slavic relations in the 40s-80s years of the XIX century. He was well aware of the importance of the Slavs of Austria-Hungary and Turkey to Tsarist Russia in its policy on the eastern question. Rayevsky's worldview was close to Slavophil ci ... Read more